Magento – Case “Catalog price rule”

A topic which I would like to address today once, since it has just occupied us hard: Magento and Catalog price rules.

Shopping cart price rules and Catalog price rules overlap partially but also have some differences and we'll get a very huge later. Both price control modes give the store owner the opportunity (special) Customers or customer groups set different prices.

General said, This is in cart price rules often caused by a Coupon Code and in any case only in the cart / Checkout. The catalog price rules, however, may adjust the prices already directly in the catalog. The customer sees so directly on what terms buys.

Catalog price rules are created similarly to Cart Price Rules. Under sales promotion > Catalog price rules, you can add them. It's a name, is it from Inactive to Active, can they apply only to certain customer groups, can build such conditions e.g.. only for specific item numbers etc. In conclusion, a one dan, the action to be performed, if all the above conditions apply. Here you can minimize percentages, or fixed amounts. Important here is the distinction of “UM” and “ON”. UM 5% about reduced price is for the Store operators significantly better than ON 5%.
After normal saving the rule, although this may be active, but must be read in the catalog by pressing Apply or previous active by pressing Save and apply. Then the changes are then displayed and used.

Until then, everything is fine. But now comes the HUGE problem: If you delete such a rule just, Although it usually disappears from the list as opposed to a shopping cart price rule is the effect (u.U.) obtain.

Now to our specific case: The customer had the problem, that when some Products of his shop as a special prize always 5% were shown the original price and also used. It did not matter whether the article had a regular special price or not, the 5% were always displayed from the original price. But only for some and not for all. First there were only 5 or 6. The customer decided to delete and re-create this article, because here no longer the problem occurred.

A day later, suddenly were back some Product of 5% Problems affected. He could not explain the. After several tests, it was found, that after saving (without change) des Articles 5% Thing occurred. There had to be a change in the system, the only affected products, which were at the time of the change in the system and created no later.

Continued interest, were ignored in the backend that regularly set special rates from the system UNTIL they were larger than 5% des Originalpreises. Once they were smaller, the manually stored special prizes were displayed.

After some time we found Try and diagnose, that it vs. no parallels between the affected. the non-affected products were not affected EXCEPT that the last were created and the previously affected. So we knew, that all items, that were created after a certain date of the 5% Problem were NOT affected and all concerned before. In the database with the articles, there was also no evidence of the problem. The special prizes were set when-- displayed normal, were no regular special prices deposited, war das Feld leer.

Wo lag now das Problem? In our specific case, it was now so, that a rule has been deposited in the shop, all of which (existing at the time of creation) Products ON 5% discounted. Problem here was, however, already, that the rule constituted no difference in the front end. The products retained their price. Thus, the rule was deleted out of hand again, and fell into oblivion. Some time later, then suddenly did the problem as described above. Every time an item is stored, it cost suddenly only 5% des Originalpreises.

The solution of the problem was the removal of the contents of the relevant rule catalog tables in the database. For this purpose, the command

TRUNCATE `catalogrule`;
TRUNCATE `catalogrule_product`;
TRUNCATE `catalogrule_product_price`;

entered directly via SQL or delete the tables manually (Backup DB definitely recommended!). Then was the 5% The problem weg.

Since this was such a problem Skuriles, I hope to be able to help with this representation, one or the other faster, than I could help myself.

But who can say, that's not funny:

1. SOME (not all) Product cost suddenly only 5%
2. There are no other websites or Store Views
3. Template changes (we tried everything) make no difference
4. Newly created products are not affected by the problem also goes without duplicating it then are problems with the new product
5. Item cost only 5% once they have been opened and saved
6. There are (lt. Backend) No cart- or catalog price rule
7. There are no obvious parallels between the affected products
8. It makes no difference whether there are special prices regularly deposited or not
9. If the regularly deposited special price but less than 5% the original price it appears

All in all one can say so, that one must be VERY careful with catalog price rules and should use this only if you know exactly what you are doing.

Used in Magento Version 1.6.2.0. Comments, Suggestions, Ask? Gladly!